CFOs held back by historical practices, research finds

A new report has found CFOs are spending too much time on data gathering and reporting, resulting in more retrospective work than forecasting work which is having an impact on their agility.

Cloud corporate performance management system, Adaptive Insights, has today released its quarterly CFO Indicator, looking at the top issues CFOs are facing, including the pace of finance, its impact on agility, and what CFOs need to do to shorten their organisations’ time to decisions.

A key finding was 77 per cent of CFOs admitting that major business decisions have been delayed due to stakeholders not having timely access to data.

“Corporate agility requires that organisations plan for multiple outcomes, particularly as economic conditions become increasingly uncertain, turbulent, and competitive,” said Robert Hull, founder and chairman of Adaptive Insights.

“CFOs can improve their organisations’ agility by accelerating the speed of scenario planning and analysis. By giving key stakeholders more immediate access to data, finance can dramatically improve decision-making — the key to maximising corporate performance.”

The survey also revealed that finance teams are spending 53 per cent of their time on reporting and data gathering alone, leaving their organisations looking back at history, rather than forecasting for the future.

CFOs reported a desire for their teams to spend less time on report preparation and data collection and more time on forecasting and scenario analysis which would lead to improved agility.

Forty-nine per cent of CFOs surveyed believe predictive analytics will contribute most to agility, followed closely by 45 per cent selecting dashboards and analytics.